Stealthy Christianists

The other day I linked to this article in a post, from the New York Times:

Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission

WASHINGTON, June 13 — In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations canthat the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.

The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”

Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency had “worked diligently to enforce the federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion.”

It was really this part that got me in a snit:

The changes are evident in a variety of actions:

¶Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.

¶Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.

¶Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques...

Earlier, I had posted about the way the Republican Party uses the AIDS issue to reward it's most important political supporting group, the religious right. There are the more obvious ways they attempt to do this, like nominating Supreme Court Justices who will chip away at Roe v. Wade, anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments, ID in public schools, etc. These are the public faces of theocracy in America. Liberals in the past have made the mistake of deeming these bones to be thrown to the religious right, not to be taken seriously in any real sense. The chipping away at Roe by the Supreme Court proves this is baldly wrong, of course, but it is in these less-publicized sneak attacks that the most damaging Christianist inroads are being made, because it puts Christianists in positions of authority, where they can decide just exactly how to interepret whose civil rights to protect, and in what manner. The effects of this will last long after the administration that put them in power is gone

Friday Cat Blogging

Diego.Here, he whores for food. To make it more effective, he has turned the position of the photo around to give it a more "avant garde" feel.


Jackson.
He collapses after a monster workout, trying to get into shape for his afore-mentioned prostitute girlfriend.

If they're fashionable...

...do they have swinging parties? Are the chicks hot?

I am glad to see I wasn't the only one whom this article irritated. I didn't really know that there was a fashionable, intellectual left anymore. Maybe there is, and I'm just left out as always.

Anyway, the reaction of the right to Rushdie's knighthood is about what I would expect-a quick "congratulations" followed by a tirade about the Muslim reaction, blather about the left's wussified conciliatory attitude and it's supposed hypocrisy for supposedly not supporting Rushdie who fights the good fight against bigoted repression (just like those brave right wing constitutional heroes!) blah blah blah blah

Much is made of this quote by Ejaz-Ul-Haq-“The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the ’sir’ title,” Mr. ul-Haq said.

It's a stupid comment, of course, and his little attempt at a save afterward doesn't cut it. The expected Muslim howling, riots, etc. will rightly be deplored. But expressions of violence like that are no stupider than, say, a multi-day celebration of a religious assassination in Milwaukee, for example . And, of course, they're only too happy to support denigration of Islam with a call to arms to protect civil liberties, freedom of speech, or whatever, but to do the same thing for someone insulting to Christians...not so much.

I was an atheistic teenager when Iran announced the Fatwa on Rushdie. Outraged by this kind of religious repression, I bought a copy of the book and immediately read it (take that, Iran! I'm sure the mullahs shake in fear knowing this). I still loathe this kind of mindless religious repression, and I support Rushdie's knighthood, even though I'm not a big fan of his actual writing. But it wasn't more than a year or two before this that I had to push through a Christian picket line to see "The Last Temptation of Christ," a movie that offended Christians, and they were no more open-minded about speech freedom than any Muslim fundamentalist. It wasn't long after that that abortion clinic bombings and threats entered my consciousness, and the news. Right-wing threats to all-powerful-activist-liberal-judges-who-try-to-ban-Christmas are greeted with a yawn by the right. The only reason that Christian Fundamentalist leaders haven't ordered Christian Fatwas, as far as I can see, is that they don't think they can get away it, not because they don't want to (oh, but wait, one DID kind of try).

This Christian Right-Wing outrage over the Islamic Fundamentalist Right-Wing outrage over the outrageous knighting of a mediocre writer is a bad-faith argument in the extreme. If I need my rights as an individual protected, I going to think twice before I turn to the political wing that brought us Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Black Sites, the torture memo, trumped up charges of voter fraud as a means to fix elections, Constitutionally dubious signing statements, the stripping away of Habeas Corpus, illegal wiretapping, and a Justice Department that reshapes its mission so organizations can "discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money." I'm sorry, but this just isn't the group of people that I would trust to protect my rights, or those of anyone else, and no amount of pontificating about the repressive Muslims is going to change that.

UPDATE: I finally get a commenter, and it's because I acted like a knob. I linked to In The Name Of Towelie to prove my Very Important Point, insinuating they were right wing Christians and the like, and it turns out they are nothing of the sort. Apparently reading the clearly written explanation as to who they are and what they do there was beyond my limited skills.

Maybe I should just go back to lurking.

Fun with Ottomans Volume III

It seems the Turkish military pressure to invade Iraq and take out the PKK Kurds is mounting:

Turkey flirts with the Iraq quagmire
By Hilmi Toros

ISTANBUL - Turkey is beefing up military preparedness against Iraq-based Kurdish rebels as a prelude to a possible cross-border incursion that is opposed by the United States, the European Union and the Iraqi government.

Three Turkish provinces bordering Iraq have already been declared "special security" zones, limiting civilian access in the wake of an increase in bomb blasts in urban areas, including the capital Ankara and Istanbul, and attacks on the military. Although no one has claimed responsibility, official and public condemnation goes
to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) insurgents slipping in from Iraq.
In addition, troops and military hardware are being amassed in Turkey's rugged and impoverished southeast, in the country's Kurdish-populated areas.

The daily newspaper Milliyet reported on Saturday that Turkish troops were already shelling PKK rebels in frontier areas within Iraq.

So far, despite public outcry for a decisive move against an estimated 3,000 secessionist PKK rebels holed up in Iraq, there has been no major incursion. But it has not been ruled out. And if it happens, it may have serious consequences for Turkey, Iraq and beyond.

Such an incursion is described as a "nightmare" scenario for the U.S. in Iraq:

The risk, analysts said, is that Turkey might become drawn into a wider conflict with Iraqi Kurds even if it initially sought to conduct a small-scale operation, and that other countries, including Iran, might also feel emboldened.

"It could open a Pandora's box for the quagmire -- the fiasco -- in Iraq to turn into a regional quagmire, with regional countries starting to fight wars on Iraqi territory," said Brookings Institution analyst Omer Taspinar.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the CSIS think tank in Washington, said, "A complete mess in the North of Iraq creates problems for everything we are trying to do in Iraq. It creates problems for our deep defense relationship with Turkey and it creates an even more chaotic situation in a part of the world where we are desperate for less chaos."

Not only would it put America at odds either with Turkey or Iraqi Kurds or both, it might spread into a couple of other potential sensitive areas:

While the current focus is on the PKK (listed by Turkey, the US and the EU as a terrorist organization), there exists a larger "Kurdish problem". Turkey, Syria and Iran also have sizable Kurdish minorities and have experienced occasional flare-ups of ethnic tensions.

The Laciner report also says that if any Turkish military action goes beyond flushing out PKK rebels to involve fighting with Iraqi Kurds, it may lead to pan-Kurdish solidarity that could spell trouble for Turkey, Syria and Iran, as well as Iraq. The main Turkish concern is that a strong Kurdish entity in northern Iraq, including an independent one in case of an Iraqi meltdown, could embolden its own Kurds to seek similar status.

So the whole situation could open up, in essence, another front in the Iraq war, one potentially more wide ranging and no less intractable.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is, for his part, in no hurry to send in the army. He faces opposition from NATO and America, and Turkey stands to lose economically in the event of an invasion. But the military in Turkey has a very strong hand, seeing itself as the guardian of the secular republic against Islamist or separatist threats. Their military has a long history, dating back to the Ottoman Empire days, of making its own political decisions and walking over (or killing) any political opposition. With an increase in Kurdish terrorist acts and a weak, vacillating, moderate Islamist government at the helm, they are already bolstering their position. Meanwhile, public support for them increases at the expense of the government:

ANKARA: Funerals for three soldiers killed in a roadside bombing set up by Kurdish rebels turned into anti-government protests Monday as thousands of mourners called on Turkey's leaders to resign over their failure to rein in the violence.

Many Turks are becoming increasingly angry over the mounting military death toll from attacks by Kurdish rebels, some of whom are believed to be entering the country from northern Iraq.

The three soldiers were killed Saturday in Sirnak, a southeastern province, and were buried in separate funerals in Istanbul, Ankara and Manisa. Thousands attended the ceremonies, carrying Turkish flags, shouting anti-government slogans and booing ministers and other government officials who were present. Military officials were greeted with applause.

In Ankara, about 10,000 people gathered at the city's largest mosque, shouting "Government resign!" as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and other officials arrived.

In Manisa, protesters booed the speaker of Parliament, Bulent Arinc, and denounced the United States and Kurdish separatists

Obviously, the situation is in and of itself bad. The surge has hardly clamped down on violence in Iraq as it is, and this is with the Kurdish areas relatively calm and violence free. The Turkish military's defiant position in the face of international and UN opposition to an incursion sounds, to my ears, strikingly familiar. The difference between the Turks and the U.S. in this equation is that while we could merely claim (wrongly) that we had evidence of WMD and that Iraq under Saddam was an imminent threat, the Turks can actually claim a real and current threat, right over their border. Bushco. can huff and puff about the wider consequences of a military incursion all they want, but that won't hold a lot of water with average Turks. The specter of terrorist attacks is no less frightening for Turkish citizens than it is for American citizens, and it is far more immediate. With every attack, it is going to be harder and harder for the already flaccid Turkish government to hold back.

In a wider sense, this is the very predictable consequence of attempting to build an empire. As anyone who has had the misfortune of reading through the PNAC website could tell you, the neoncons wanted to take over Iraq and establish a permanent American "footprint" long before 9/11. This is long established fact. When I put on my little tinfoil hat, I see a direct pipeline from PNAC to the "sea of oil" in Iraq. But even if you take their prattlings at face value and believe their quasi-Wilsonian nonsense about spreading democracy (without all of that wussy League-of-Nations stuff, however) it amounts to the same thing-they are going to impose their will on other sovereign nations for what they see as America's (or really, their) interests.

The problem is that other nations in the region, or anywhere, are going to have interests of their own-interests that probably will not coincide with Americas. In fact, they may be at cross purposes. Furthermore, the citizens of an invaded country will almost ALWAYS be at cross purposes with their occupiers, which makes surrounding countries even jumpier, since there will almost surely be some runoff into their borders. The presence of an outside, interloping military force planting itself permanently in the region is almost guaranteed to invoke hostility all of its own accord.

In the face of hostile natives and hostile nations surrounding our forces, we, or any occupying force, would of course have to make deals with anyone who will do so. But this means that as soon as we do, someone else might see this as being against THEIR interests. In this way, we become entangled with competing allies or allies who are aligned with our enemies. And ultimately, it could be no other way-despite all of the right-wing chest beating and shouting, we simply cannot control people through the force of our will or our military. The days of that kind of physical dominance are over, unless we would like to drop fistfulls of atomic weaponry (I know some on the right would gladly do so), which brings up its own set of problems.

This is ultimately an untenable situation, making our security far worse than even I, a terrible pessimist, could ever have foreseen. And yet, in many ways it was pretty damn predictable-in fact, many people did predict it, and were called traitors for the effort. Many of the self-proclaimed Real Americans who brought us to this point are still in charge. I hope they can find a way to pull us back from a further escalating disaster, but I doubt they even really wish to try. It's not an edifying thought that in this case, for a sane resolution, I have to depend on Islamist Tayyip Erdogan and the PKK to find a way to a ceasefire, but there it is.

Christian Charity

I am back from a week's absence, due to a ripping bad sore throat/fever thing I got from that petrie dish of an office that I work in. I tried to get up and blog a few times that week, between thrashing around in my bed in a pool of acrid sweat, with visions of nude Condoleeza Rice can-can lines dancing maniacally through my head. But I just didn't have the strength. Does that make me the world's lamest blogger? (I would contend that it is my weak, incoherent content, but this couldn't have helped).

Anyway, I am going to ease back into things here...

This, from Talk to Action:

The stacks of information about those worthy of consideration for Theocrat of the Week -- can get very high. But this week Our Distinguished Panel of Judges did not get far down the pile when they recognized the winners and stopped the competition.

Our winners this week plan to reenact the the actions of theocratic martyr Paul Hill next month in Milwaukee. On July 29, 1994 Paul Hill, who sought to set a good example for Christian theocratic revolutionaries, assasinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

Why Milwaukee? Why not? There are people here who recognize Paul Hill as a hero, and we would love to welcome others from around the country who share our belief. Hopefully, in the future, others will host events in their cities.

Planned events include:

Activities at our two remaining killing centers

Literature distribution

Ministry at the Federal Courthouse

Reenactment of 7-29-1994

Paul Hill March

Ministry at other public forums

It should be noted that George L. Wilson, the proprietor of Children Needs Heroes, recognizes two other heroes he believes America's children should learn about: Shelly Shannon, who was convicted of the attempted assasination of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, among other serious crimes, including a series of arsons; and of course, James Kopp, who was convicted in the sniper assasination of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, New York. Kopp is also the chief suspect in several other shootings.

All three are recognized as Heroes of the Faith by the Army of God, members of which are likely to be on hand for the festivities.

This is jaw-dropping. There is going to be a celebration of home-grown terrorism, with a wonderful Christian bent. From the culture of life. This inspires awe in me. it really, really does. This naked disregard for life is nothing new, of course, and the hypocrisy of this kind of violence-celebrating hate-mongering is well noted in the blogosphere (if not the MSM, who assiduously avoid ever equating terrorists with good Christians). This kind of self-righteous posturing and celebrating of violence is part and parcel of the Christianists, and their benefactors look on with approval. It was exactly this kind of Christian hypocrisy that started my political awakening and pushed me to the left, back in the Reagan 80s, when they were just beginning to flex their muscles.

But this is more than just academic to me. I live in Milwaukee. This is personal, as I see it, an affront to the liberal traditions that long guided it's history. And even if you don't see that part of Milwaukee as valuable, the idea that this sleazy happening is coming here, and that they chose here to make this stand on behalf of domestic terrorism, is still appalling. Apparently, they think Milwaukee is filled with yokels slack-jawed enough to celebrate this kind of guns-n-Jesus idiocy (I especially love the "re-enactment." Perhaps Milwaukee can host re-enactments of other religiously-motivated killings for appreciative audiences-July 6, 1415 comes to mind.) At a time when our self-appointed daddy-leaders are foaming at the mouth to kill as many barbaric Muslims as they can have others bomb, the idea that this is mainstream Christianity is sickening.

I haven't heard of any kinds of counter-demonstration to this point. Obviously, in deference to the 1st Amendment the show can't be stopped, and that wouldn't help anyway, it would just add to their never-ending persecution complex. If anyone reads this, is there any place to potentially organize a counter rally or some such thing?